Cam Girls

I live a double life. By day, I am a software developer, living in a world where your choice of hoodie, afternoon beer, and text editor mark your rank within the social tribe. At night, my mousy ponytail comes down and the Givenchy Rouge goes on as I fire up my snowball microphone and HD webcam. No doubt, I’m probably getting naked for guys whose open source code I use day to day in my projects. I’m a tech geek and proud cam model. That’s why last month’s Federal Trade Commission ruling that the popular photo sharing mobile app Snapchat deceived its users has me fuming.

The story of Snapchat reads like the typical Silicon Valley tech bromance novel. Founded by Bobby Murphy and Evan Spiegel when they were students at Stanford and living in the school’s Kappa Sigma fraternity house, the early years of Snapchat are chronicled in Forbes. They were frat-bro misogynists with little regard for the women of Stanford, illustrated by some emails obtained by Valleywag that Spiegel sent to his Kappa Sigma brothers which included the term “sororisluts.”

Snapchat’s main value proposition is that the app allows users to send mobile photos that are secure and which are deleted from the recipient’s phone after one viewing. However, the FTC found that the app is not secure at all. The FTC’s ruling details that the company failed to communicate security holes to users. These security holes include a hacker security breach, a recipient’s ability to take a screenshot of a photo without notifying the sender, and the fact that images were not deleted after a recipient opened them. According to a press release from the FTC, “Snapchat deceptively told its users that the sender would be notified if a recipient took a screenshot of a snap. In fact, any recipient with an Apple device that has an operating system pre-dating iOS 7 can use a simple method to evade the app’s screenshot detection, and the app will not notify the sender.” The FTC also found that Snapchat “tracked and transmitted some users’ location information and collected data from their address books without consent.” Although many users who trusted Snapchat with their private photos were surprised to learn about the FTC’s findings, the history of the company points to a disregard for user security almost from the start. [READ MORE]

HERE. is Lindsay Kugler’s “mini-memoir,” covering a year in her early twenties living in Austin, being in a codependent relationship, and working on My Free Cams. She also worked as a social worker and writes about dealing with clients from both worlds in a style that reads like poetry, with negative spaces that leave you wanting more while you cackle.

One time while trying to find one of JC’s medicine bottles I found a soiled copy of The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton. I first encountered it in one of my sexuality courses I took at Arizona State and I wondered why JC would even have a copy. I imagined him pushing through a bookstore to find something so salaciously titled to bring it home and find it was less Penthouse and more personal theory.

HERE. feels like stumbling upon someone’s very relatable diary. Haven’t we all done the equivalent of getting drunk and crawling into a cardboard box so someone would happen upon us and give us sympathy? Originally self-published through Portland’s Independent Publishing Resource Center before being picked up by University of Hell Press, Kugler’s debut also has my all-time favorite About The Author line: “She is a college dropout who has never cared about school.” I loved doing this interview and can’t wait to read what she writes next.

How did you get started camming?

In the context of the relationship that I was in, I was not getting a lot of attention and I was not getting a lot of sexual fulfillment. I had first gone through Craigslist Casual Encounters being like, “I’m just interested in being on cam with someone via Skype and I don’t even really want to see you. I just kinda want to take my clothes off and that would be it.” And I got a few responses and talked to some people and then they were like, “You could make money doing this.” At the time I was working for AmeriCorps, so I was working 40 hours a week making like no money as a case manager, and I was like, “You know, I could use some extra income.” So I looked into it and really how I got started was sort of a mixture of needing to get paid and also needing to fulfill this void that I had in my life. [READ MORE]

Breast implant removal is something that most ladies in the adult industry won’t even consider, and in fact fear undergoing due to implant rupture or some other emergency. But it’s a procedure I was eager to have to remove the implants I’d gotten in 2004 after dancing for four years. Like many other girls, I saw the implanted dancers as having their “stripper badges.” An enhanced bust said, “Hey, I make a lot of money, so I can afford these things, and I’m damn good at what I do. I’m on a higher tier then you. Like Hammer said, ‘You cant touch this.'”

As a consistent top earner, I felt like I had made it to this category. The whale of Northeast Ohio was in love with me, and management put up with my diva-like behavior on account of him. What can I say? I was young, felt like I’d made it, and wanted my stripper badge. No sooner did the whale offer to pay off one of my credit cards than I decided to get them. I put them on my card posthaste, and he ended up paying them off. Made it, indeed.

As a pornographer and cam ho, I don’t deal in cash the way other sex workers do. I just get boring checks and wire transfers like some kind of grown up with an office job. When I withdrew cash at the bank for a trip, I had to get a photo of some of my earnings with my life partner/pimp/BFF, Mr. Mouse.—Furry Girl

Hey! Wouldn’t it be great if porn sites were made pornier by putting a big .XXX at the end of them? That would make me so much more aroused and reduce the confusion I feel when I visit a dot com and can’t determine for myself whether or not I’m looking at porn. After all, it’s very hard to judge whether or not I should devalue content and the people who make it simply by looking at it. I need more LABELS, man, especially when I visit one of those sites that’s sort of sexy but also has lots of words on it and I’m not sure whether I should start rubbing my mini-boner yet. Will it pay off with a free sex video? Or is there going to be a long non-nude poem to interrupt everything? Are there going to be a bunch of annoying “join now” buttons or will the mystery be preserved of why someone on the internet is enticing me with erotic photos (just because she loves to show off her hot body for free, I hope). If professional porn sites have a big-ass Triple-X right in the address bar, won’t it provide a genuine public service?